Upcoming and Past Events

In this workshop, Kumiko Fushino (Temple University) demonstrated several cooperative learning techniques for English classrooms. As communicative language teaching has gained momentum, English teachers have started using group work in their classes. However, getting students interacting with each other in English can be a problem. In theory, group work increases opportunities of student-student communication; however, this does not always happen. Cooperative learning principles provide teachers with many useful ideas to promote effective student-student interaction, and books on CL offer countless techniques which teachers can easily adapt to their classrooms. However, techniques for the EFL situation are seldom introduced in those books. Therefore, in this workshop, Kumiko Fushino introduced the basic CL principles explained in Jacobs, Power, Loh’s The Teacher’s Sourcebook for Cooperative Learning (2002), which Fushino co-translated into Japanese while demonstrating CL activities. She introduced each CL principle and demonstrated techniques which have been effective in her English lessons. Workshop participants joined in these CL activities to actually experience them so they can better apply CL techniques in their own English classes. Finally, some cautions about CL group work in English classes were discussed.